"The very word secrecy is
repugnant in a free and open society; and we are as a people inherently and
historically opposed to secret societies, to secret oaths and to secret
proceedings."John F. Kennedy

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No words were
ever more relevant than these are when it comes to our elections and the
counting of our votes. When did secrecy take precedence over transparency
in the counting of our votes in America through the
use of electronic voting systems and, more
importantly, why? What the majority of Americans have NOT heard about, but most
election reform advocates are already aware of,isthe German
Constitutional Court's recent decision to ban electronic voting in Germany
by ruling it "unconstitutional."

Let's think about this for a
minute. By using a Constitution, similar to
our own, and which had to be approved of by the U.S. after World War II,
Germany has, through its High Court, determined that computerized, secret vote
counting does not subscribe to the democratic standards of their country!
Yet, still here in America, 95% of us are using some sort of computerized
voting system to cast and/or count our ballots---completely government
sanctioned, corporate controlled,using software protected from public
scrutiny by trade secret laws. NO ONE can guarantee even a single voter
that their vote is being counted as cast. What's wrong with this
picture?

It is, indeed, encouraging that
support is growing for a return to public hand-counts here in the U.S. and, as
a result, we may someday soon reach a "critical mass" of support
largeenough to put pressure on our courts to also recognize this
fundamental right and "persuade" them to rule in a similar fashion as the
German Court. When that day comes, we will be forever indebted to our
German counterparts.

Obviously,
the significance of the German Court's ruling is not only a sea change in how
elections will be administered in Germany , which are now to be done by
properly administered public hand-counts, but I see it as a powerful new tool
that can be used by election reform advocates in achieving similar reform in
the U.S.

Bev Harris, Founder of Black Box
Voting.org and Paul Lehto, an attorney from Washington
State and election reform advocate have both written excellent articles
analyzing the Court's decision to ban electronic voting and are must
reads.

[On a personal note, I am extremely gratified to
have discovered that the arguments made by the Court in banning electronic
voting were almost the exact same arguments made to election officials and
Congress by those of us in the election reform community who chose to be
totally committed to a return to public hand-counts for the past 3+
years. I, along with a small group of public hand count advocates, in
particular, Dr. Sheila Parks, Founder of the Center for Hand-Counted Paper Ballots
http://www.handcountedpaperballots.org/and Vickie Karp and Karen
Renick, Co-Directors of VoteRescue.org,
decided early on to oppose compromise of any kind thatwould require the
use of voting machines,audits,exit
polls,ormail-inballots, i.e.,anything other than
public hand counts, asan acceptableway
ofcountingthe votes. In fact, the Court's ruling actually
supported our unequivocal position that "the only experts in our elections
should be the citizens themselves." When average citizens with no
legal expertise are vindicated by such a venerable body of legal experts, it is
for me, testament to the absolute need to recognize and honor the "principles
of transparency" in elections, which can ONLY be achieved through public
hand-counts.]

After reading Harris's and Lehto's analyses, as well as
reading the Court's decision in its entirety, I immediately recognized the
importance of locating the father (Joachim Wiesner) and son (Ulrich Wiesner),
who had filed the lawsuit and then persuade them to tell their story to the American people.

Dr. Ulrich Wiesner holds a Ph.D. in Physics and works as a
consultant for a U.S.-American Software Company. His father, Joachim, is a
retired political scientist. Together, they filed the lawsuit with
Germany 's Federal Constitutional Court after the German parliament had rejected a petition drive promoted by the
Wiesners, which had been signed by over 45,000 people to try to ban electronic
voting back in 2005.